19 July 2015

New Horizons mission to Pluto. The moons of Pluto. Styx.

Image of the Plutonian System. The family
portrait of Plutoconsists of Papa Pluto, Mama Charon and the 4 kids:
Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx. :)Credit: HST jAPL SwRI NASA.

Did you know that the last moon named Styx was discovered while looking for hazards to the New Horizons mission?
No!

Keep reading.

The innermost and
largest moon, Charon, was discovered by James Christy on
June 22, 1978, nearly half a century after Pluto was discovered. This
led to a substantial revision in estimates of Pluto's size, which had
previously assumed that the observed mass and reflected light of the
system were all attributable to Pluto alone.

Two additional moons
were imaged by astronomers of the Pluto Companion Search Team
preparing for the New Horizons mission and working with
the Hubble Space Telescope on 15 May 2005, which received
the provisional designations S/2005 P 1 and
S/2005 P 2. The International Astronomical Union officially
named Pluto's newest moons Nix (or Pluto II, the inner
of the two moons, formerly P 2) and Hydra (Pluto III,
the outer moon, formerly P 1), on 21 June 2006.

Kerberos, announced
on 20 July 2011, was detected using NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope during a survey searching for rings around Pluto. It was
first seen in an image taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on 28
June. It was confirmed in subsequent Hubble pictures taken on 3 and
18 July. Styx, announced on 7 July 2012, was discovered while looking
for potential hazards for New Horizons.

My name is Stefan Lamoureux, I am the president of the Astronomy Club Toutatis, Kustavi, Finland. We organize all kinds of activities concerning astronomy and night observation at our Observatory in Kustavi, Finland. Also we travel around the world to visit the astronomy scene and write about it. Welcome to our blog and enjoy the astronomy behind it!